


everybody here in his hands

by bravelikealady



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: AU, Future Fic, Other, SHIELD, ambrollins - Freeform, and yet also past fic, dude idk if there are other terms?, the shield - Freeform, the shield made me weak, wybrose
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 18:12:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17146610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bravelikealady/pseuds/bravelikealady
Summary: Seth Rollins asks, "why?" Dean Ambrose cannot reply.Only Bray Wyatt knows the answer.---excerpt---“You were a good child, Dean.”“What the fuck does that mean?”“Children are born… and others… there are children of the soil, sprung from roots, unintended. Children not meant to be played with, children who might play with dead things or be dead things themselves.”“If you’re coming, come on. Do it right now.”Bray laughs, “beware the man in the woods, Dean.”Dean runs, as much as a man can unable to set himself upright with the pain in his ribs, towards Bray Wyatt, not tangible. A man. Or something else. Something shaped like a man.Your demons mold you, Dean remembers what Bray said to him. Not that night, but another.“Wake up, Dean.”“Is this a metaphor?”But understand: I mold the demons“Wake… Up…”He’s sweating, his ribs ache, he’s crying, his fists are clenched. He doesn’t know for sure but he feels like he just called out, Seth, screamed desperately, Roman!...But he is in his bed. Sheets stick to his burning skin.He is alive. He is alone.





	everybody here in his hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kalologix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalologix/gifts).



> “But nobody knows how we were when the cameras stop rolling. Nobody knows what kind of people we were behind the scenes, the things we did. We were rotten to the core from the very beginning. And now time has caught up to us and we’re all gonna pay for it in different ways…”
> 
> -Dean Ambrose, November 19, 2018, via Monday Night Raw
> 
> “I am yesterday, the dawn (the present) and tomorrow ( the future): I organize the rebirth of souls, of all nature and her mysteries.
> 
> -The Book of the Dead”
> 
> “Revenge is a Confession....”
> 
> -Bray Wyatt, December 2018, via Twitter

##  December 24, 2018

##  _ 3:00am _

 

His back is pressed into a tree. He can’t see it, but he feels it. The familiar scratch of bark against his bare skin.  _ Be cool to know where my shirt is _ , he thinks,  _ or how I got here… _

 

Groaning, he presses a hand into the dirt and fallen pine needles below and barely pushes himself up. Everything in him aches. He reaches for the part of him that hurts the most. 

 

_ Lower ribs. Wet.  _

 

_ Blood _ , he thinks.

 

He shrugs it off. 

 

He sighs and decides to give himself a pep talk as he shuffles forward, “Hey man, you can bleed and wander at the same time. Let’s find some damn light.”

 

It doesn’t work. It rarely does. But he’s been doing it all his life, he’s sure as shit not gonna stop now. Not in the cool, pitch black night, pine and blood and sweat the only scent on the air.

 

And then he tastes something. He tastes… apples…

 

_ Again. _

 

“You know that I am on my way, boy,” a familiar voice floats in on the wind as something like a moon seems to rise beyond the trees.

 

Bray. Bray Wyatt. 

 

Dean knew it was him, knew it before he heard him, knew it before the great blue moon.

 

_ Apples. _

 

“Yeah. The stench of swamp beard and years unwashed linen pants carries miles.”   
  


“You were a good child, Dean.”

 

“What the fuck does that mean?”

 

“Children are born… and others… there are children of the soil, sprung from roots, unintended. Children not meant to be played with, children who might play with dead things or be dead things themselves.”

 

“If you’re coming, come on. Do it right now.”

 

Bray laughs, “beware the man in the woods, Dean.”

 

Dean runs, as much as a man can unable to set himself upright with the pain in his ribs, towards Bray Wyatt, not tangible. A man. Or something else. Something shaped like a man.

 

**_Your demons mold you_ ** , Dean remembers what Bray said to him. Not that night, but another.

 

“Wake up, Dean.”

 

“Is this a metaphor?”

 

**_But understand: I mold the demons_ **

 

“Wake… Up…”

 

He’s sweating, his ribs ache, he’s crying, his fists are clenched. He doesn’t know for sure but he feels like he just called out,  _ Seth _ , screamed desperately,  _ Roman! _

 

...But he is in his bed. Sheets stick to his burning skin.

 

He is alive. He is alone.

 

“Just a nightmare,” he tells himself, gulping the water that’s been on his makeshift night stand for at least two days. 

 

“Just a nightmare.” 

 

This time, he reaches for the whiskey but not even the slow, sweet burn of self medication gets that taste out of his mouth… that voice out of his head.

 

**_“...I mold the demons. And they march on my command.”_ **

 

He picks up his phone. It’s been on charge all night. It’s on charge right then but still… stuck at 5%.

 

“Piece of shit.”

 

His breath pauses in his chest, forgets what to do as his heartbeat races, climbs, dives, climbs again.

 

It’s Christmas eve.

 

He is alive.

 

He is alone.

 

\-----

 

##  December 24, 2013

##  _ 9:17pm _

 

“Yo! Let’s go,” Roman calls after Dean and Seth as they try to see who will be victorious in the classic battle, Man Vs Vending Machine. “I will stop at a gas station, come on! Children have been born and grown while y’all trying to salvage Funyuns.”

 

It seemed like a great idea to drive from Austin to Houston after Raw last night. To eat and laugh and live large after a loss that felt like a win. They were all on the same page. Fighting together was like… ballet, like poetry, like  _ family _ .  Punk, Cena, Big E. They’re all a different caliber of men. And the Shield had scared them all.

 

They’d dropped into the cheapest hotel they could find, Seth and Roman sleeping on rock hard beds, which were really barely passable as cots. Dean curling up a weird, stained ottoman by the broken AC. Cold, but happy, furling himself deeper into his hoodie. He didn’t sleep well, or at all, but it was something. The flickering light of a shitty parking lot light through a peek in the curtain, the sound of Roman and Seth sleeping in the same room, deep breaths, long exhalations. The crinkle and scratch of natural movement and deep dreamed flexations against over-rinsed sheets.

 

That was the thing about being a boy who was always awake turned a man who understood his vigilance. You understood how much trust and vulnerability rested in a room where someone you loved rested.

 

And here they were. Somewhere in Louisiana, Seth and Dean laughing so hard it hurts because a machine betrayed their dollar fifty. Seth trying to help Dean get these damn Funyuns, when moments before he listed every ailment Dean might experience for eating what was likely long expired and poorly protected snacks. Roman growing weary. He’s not a snacker, he’s an eater. And he’s got a real home, a fiance, a child. He has something to get to that Seth and Dean can’t comprehend.

 

So for once it is Dean who tells Seth to cut out the shenanigans. They do stop at a little convenience store. Roman always keeps his word. Dean grabs a bag of beef jerky, a random handful of whatever those little packs of nuts are on the top of every aisle, several Mountain Dews, a Monster Energy, and a box of those granola bars- the ones that are good, the most crunch, but they get… everywhere. Most of it is gone in about two hours. 

 

And maybe that’s why he falls asleep. A notorious fearer of survivor’s guilt, he can never sleep on the road. He nods off and comes back again. If the driver is awake, Dean is awake.

 

But this time, he went to sleep.

 

##  December 24, 2013

##  _ 11:56pm _

 

Now he’s on the ground, hard asphalt, broken glass, the prickling of spoils from the battle of humidity and dew on his skin, ignorant of the chaos around him. He rolls from his back to his side. Roman is maybe 20 feet from him, lying on his stomach. His eyes are open. Wide open. But Roman sees nothing as blood spills from his mouth.

 

_ Gone. He’s gone. No. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. _

 

He feels too much. Pain. Grief. Disbelief. All coiling within themselves, within him. He tries to make his way to Roman but stops when he hears his name.

 

“Dean,” it’s a choke and a sob. It’s the softest thing he’s ever heard.

 

_ Seth. _

 

“Seth! Seth, where are you man?”

 

Dean tries to stand, stumbles before he can get a leg up. He looks to see why his left leg has betrayed him. He wishes he hadn’t. He realizes he smells something burning. 

 

It’s the rental car. 

 

He wants so badly to get to Roman, to change it, to fix it, like some touch or breath he could give would make Roman alive again but he can’t.

 

“He was the good one,” he doesn’t know what he means when he says it. But he knows it’s true.

 

Knee by knee, he makes his way to Seth.

 

“I’m scared,” Seth says, reaching for Dean.

 

Dean takes his hand. One of Seth’s eyes is swollen shut, turning shades of purple and black, maybe bleeding. He tries not to cry, tries to hold it together, “It’s okay. We’ll get help. Where’s your phone?”

 

“I don’t know. I don’t… maybe in my pocket.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll find it.”

 

The car gives a horrifying shriek, as metal caves and bends to the flame. Dean doesn’t know for sure, but this is always how it goes in the movies. Before it all blows up. 

 

He is trying to shush Seth, like you would a child. He is desperate for Seth to be quiet. There’s no signal, no matter what Dean does. 

 

_ Please don’t let him feel it, please, please _ , he prays to a deity he doesn’t even know anymore. Seth’s breath changes. 

 

“Are you bleeding?”

 

“What? I don’t know, I don’t know.”

 

“Shh, it’s okay.”

 

Dean lifts Seth’s shirt to see if he can stop bleeding. He doesn’t like what he finds. 

 

“It’s not too bad. You’re gonna be okay.”

 

“Roman… is Roman? He went through the windshield before me, I think. He must’ve gone so far. Where is he?”

 

“I saw him over there, he told me to get you, he’s okay,” somewhere far away from here Dean can feel that he’s weeping, but that’s a different Dean, some other Dean, not the one trying to save Seth.

 

And that’s when the light changes. The night sky, the streetlamps, all of it… seems to go… out.

 

Out.

 

“Dean…”

 

He knows that voice.

 

He looks behind him. There stands Bray Wyatt.

 

“Bray… Bray, man, please do you have a phone? DO YOU HAVE A PHONE? Please. Please, man. Come the fuck on, why are you smiling?”

 

And then Bray is gone.

 

“I have what you need Dean.”

 

Dean jumps with fright and a new wave of pain and fear flow through him. Bray, who was a second ago ten feet behind him is now in front of him. On his knees. Just at Seth’s head.

 

“A fucking phone? A life alert? We’re fucking dying.”

 

“No… I have more than that. This is our whole world, Dean. You and I.”

 

Seth begins to gasp for air.

 

“Hey, hey, hey… hang on. Hang on for me, it’s gonna be okay. Bray is gonna get help. He’s gonna leave… whatever the hell he thinks is going on in the ring.”

 

“Is this your justice, Dean?”

 

“Cut the shit, Wyatt. Please. Please call 911.”

 

Dean tries again to stand, tries to find some way to fight him. But he’s scared to move. He knows his leg won’t bear his weight and he knows if he takes his hand off of Seth’s stomach-

 

He can’t think about that.

 

“All you have to do, Dean, is promise… promise me.”

 

“Promise you what?”

 

“That you’ll remember. And come home.”

 

“I don’t… I don’t know what that means.”

 

“Everything is wrong, Dean. But I can fix it.”

 

“I don’t fucking trust you.”

 

“Dean,” Bray laughs. “Dean, you don’t trust anybody.”

 

“I do.”

 

“No, no, no…” 

 

Bray continues to laugh and for half a second the urge to tear the skin from his way distracts him from everything he has lost and is about to lose.

“Where is home? What do you mean? I’ll go anywhere you want, just call a fucking ambulance before it’s too late. How are you here? Ho-”

 

Bray starts running his fingers through Seth’s hair. Seth’s skin is fading to a shade of inconspicuous yellow, pale and startling, “please don’t touch him like that.”

 

“Promise me, Dean. Promise me you’ll serve me. You’ll all serve me. And I’ll make this go away.”

 

“I…”

 

He thinks of Roman… gone. And Seth, here, suffering, fading away. Hands in his hair. Hands that aren’t his. Hands he didn’t love or ask for or consent to.

 

“I… what do you-”

 

He is choking on his own sobs and for the first time he notices how badly his abdomen hurts. He presses his hand to his ribs… and he feels them. Not beneath the skin. There… really there.

 

“Bray… listen…” he is almost growling, his teeth bared, drool and bile and blood seeping through. “I don’t understand what you want.”

 

Humming a song that makes Dean’s heart drop, Bray Wyatt is looking full on at Seth now. Smiling down on him. His hands still in those dark curls. Those dark curls that Dean has never let himself curl around his fingers.

 

“You do understand, Dean. You always have,” he says, not looking up.

 

Dean doesn’t know how he knows, but he does. He knows.

 

“No,” Dean says. “No… Roman wouldn’t-”

 

“Roman wouldn’t anything now, boy.”

 

“IT WOULDN’T BE WHAT HE WANTS!”

 

“What do you want, Dean?”

 

He finally looks up, his eyes seem otherworldly. And then they turn black. Not just the pupil, but the iris, but the white of the eye, all of it. A black world. The flames of the wreck flicker in them, desperate hot tongues lapping at a black pool, desperate to be quenched. He grips Seth’s head hard. Seth squeezes Dean’s hand with impossible force, he feels bones fracture. Seth screams.

 

“STOP THAT. WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HIM?”

 

Dean feels so angry that he thinks he could stand now, he could do it, blood and muscle be damned. But he’s so… so tired. There’s more blood now. He can’t tell if he’s bleeding on Seth or if the pressure he’s applying to his stomach with his free hand is that useless.

 

“He is feeling. See, Dean, you’re right… Feeling is a terrible, terrible thing… But he feels all of it. Isn’t it funny? Now, here, under the stars, he is so perfectly alive. Because he is dying.”

 

“No.”

 

“He is. Look at him. You know it. And you’d be gone too. If I left you. But not quick enough. You’d have time. Time to bleed out here, helpless, unable to even reach their bodies, for some comfort. For some goodbye. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? To get to say your piece? To get to say goodbye?”

 

“Fuck. You.”

 

“Or is it this, Dean… to hear that it’s alright, that it will be okay. Always that scared boy, playing outside alone, hearing the bumps and the bangs and the scream. Powerless. I’ll tell you it’s okay, Dean. And I can tell the truth. Promise me, Dean.”

 

“No.”

 

“Promise me.”

 

Seth’s hand goes limp.

 

Dean takes all the strength left in his body and shoves Bray. Bray laughs as he relinquishes his hold on Seth, but stays there, on his knees. Like a sick prayer to a god of pain, a god of strife, a god of aching. He rests his head on Seth’s chest. The breaths Seth is taking are so small, too much time passes between them. Dean tastes his own bile, Seth’s blood, his sweat, his tears.

 

Now Bray’s hands find Dean’s hair. His fingers are gentle against his scalp but the energy is… wrong.

 

“Serve me. I will bring him back. I will heal you two here and now. You will all serve me.”

 

Dean is silent. He can’t say no. But he can’t say yes.

 

Dean Ambrose never knew he believed in a soul until tonight.

 

Seth draws in one large breath and the sound it makes frightens Dean as Seth’s chest rattles.

“Please,” Seth whispers, as he weakly places his hand on the back of Dean’s neck. “I don’t want to die.”

 

“Seth… we’ll be his.”

 

“N- no… we can make it-” 

 

Dean sits up and Bray’s hands drop down to Seth’s chest. Dean smoothes Seth’s hair out of his face and tries to drown himself in his now wide open eyes, “Dean, we… will… make it ours.”

 

“Seth…”

 

“Dean… I love… it’s… plea-”

 

Dean shuts his eyes as the breath leaves Seth slowly, one final sigh into the night. He can’t take another pair of lifeless eyes. Bray says nothing. And somehow Dean knows that Bray knows that Seth’s plea is circling his mind too fast for anything else to pass through. 

 

And not just the way you know someone knows because you’re a predictable, messy fuck. 

 

Dean knows Bray knows… because Dean  _ knows _ Bray.

 

“I’ll do it.”

 

“Yes,” Bray grabs Dean, presses kisses to his forehead. “I’ve been waiting, Dean. I’ve been waiting to give you this gift.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because it’s you she cries for Dean… even now… she still cries for you.”


End file.
